Serena Draper

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Sunshine Girl

As any resident of the United Kingdom can tell you, our summer varies.

Sometimes it lasts from March 21st to March 28th, and sometimes it arrives on August 5th and lasts until August 7th. In between anything from snow on high ground in June or floods over low ground in July can happen.

At first—that is, when you’re about nine years old—it’s exciting. Later on it's not so exciting. It’s always popular, of course, with the manufacturers of umbrellas, mackintoshes and fur boots, but they’re just in it for the money.

Up to the time of going to press with this issue we’d had a whole week of summer this year. It happened during the second week in June and out came the sunshine girls, including SERENA DRAPAR of Brighton.

It was a little breezy on the beach but it was lovely and sunny too, and you couldn't have wished for anything more delightful to adorn the scene than Serena.

Unless you were fanatical about zebras. Zebra-lovers are an odd lot. They go out and lasso them, take them home and keep them in the garden and spend ecstatic hours looking at them.

Imagine them preferring looking at zebras to looking at Serena.

No wonder the psychiatrists don’t know which way to turn.

Serena works in an office and emerges sunnily at the end of each day, and that happens even when it's pelting hailstones. A zebra would just look mournful.

Span No 180 - August 1969

Jacqueline Blair

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Wherever You Are

You may be in Tahiti, you may be in Sing-Sing—no matter, men. Relax. Ease your mind of any question as to who the nicest hockey captain in her school was. It was JACQUELINE BLAIR herself. She’s twenty now and still an open-air girl.

Beautiful Britons No 105 - July 1964

Penny Baxter

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It’s Fun Finding Florence

Florence, jewel of Italy, means art In all its essence to artists and students. Although PENNY BAXTER of British-Swedish parentage is undyingly devoted to London she couldn't turn down the chance of going to Florence for a year. If she looks a little wistful here it was because she hated to leave her cosy London bed-sit, but don’t take it to heart, Ernest, for Penny knows it’s going to be fun finding Florence.

Penny is just twenty-one, has been an art student since her teens and harbours not so much a burning desire to paint like Rembrandt or Sutherland but to try her genius at interior decorating.

She knows, of course, where you can really make the money. And as she loves fast cars, she thinks a successful interior decorator has more chance of acquiring an E type than a painter has.

Anyway, she’ll find out in Florence whether she has the spark that will make her oblivious of things like money and cars, or whether she is indeed destined to make a career amid odd wallpapers and droll curtains and jazzy knick-knacks.

She thought it quite mad but quite fascinating that anyone should consider her to be a pin-up type. She thought pin-up types were those who looked as if they were about to topple slowly over.

Beautiful Britons No 118 - September 1965

Kim West

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Which Way Is West?

Well, the way KIM WEST is pointing is towards a place in the top ten glamour models of London. Other girls can be Twiggy models, Kim wants to be a scintillating glamour girl, and the way she’s started is with vitalistics of 36 "-23 "-36". There’s a long way to get to anywhere. Kim has chosen the round way.

Spick No 172 - March 1968

Vincene Cradduck

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Speaking Of The Mini

Where were we?

Well, when VINCENE CRADDUCK came into the country pub we were at the bar, knocking back a pint of old ale and speaking of the mini to a couple of high-hatted knowalls who’d seen them all.

But they hadn’t seen Vincene in her mini.

We had.

There she was in front of our camera, and we still can’t remember whether her mini quite began or whether it was ever finished.

But since Vincene has the loveliest legs, you can imagine, we felt that if Vincene wasn’t bothered, then we weren’t either.

Vincene likes a glass of old ale herself in a country pub and we had a very enchanting conversation, leaving the two knowalls out of it.

Beautiful Britons No 163 - June 1969

Ruth Cavendish

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Live Ones Are So Frisky

Pin-up favourite RUTH CAVENDISH prefers a wooden horse.

She tried to ride a live one not long ago, down on a cattle farm. It was dead frisky. Ruth got all jerked about and finally fell off backwards.

Clonk.

She wouldn't have been as upset as she was if it hadn't given a horse laugh. She hasn't spoken to it since. She has settled for a quiet ride on Pinto, which is a rocking-horse she grew up with.

Pinto has nice manners.

Beautiful Britons No 203 - October 1972

Lamorna Lea

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The Stole Does Something

What does it do that a diamond tiara couldn’t do better? Ask LAMORNA LEA, our popular pin-up pet.

“Also,” said Lamorna, less cautiously and more spontaneously, “if it’s white ermine it’s kind of luxurious to snuggle up to.”

"After all," she added thoughtfully, "what help is a diamond tiara when a girl’s in bra and briefs? It’s only that It’s worth a lot of money.”

“You know what?” Lamorna concluded. “I think you can take the stole and give me a tiara."

Span Extra - Spring 1959

Angie Holt

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High Stepper

When you're nineteen and life isn't weighing you heavily down with all the responsibilities you accrue as you get older, you feel like stepping out to enjoy the wonders of the world.

You've a long way to go before you get to the age where you're all creaky and feeble and need to ask kind policemen to see you across the road. You're full of health and energy and can't understand what hypochondriacs make so much fuss about.

Absolutely whizzo with health and energy is ANGIE HOLT, high - stepping her way through the park, much to the amazement and delight of ninety-year-old gentlemen sitting in fragile pre-occupation on the park benches.

'Well, heck," says one old gent, "girls weren't like that when I was a

boy.”

‘No reason why we can't make up for it now," says a second old gent. ‘‘Where are you creaking off to?" asks the first ancient.

"I'm going to ask her for a dance,” says the second.

Spick No 172 - March 1968

Julie Collins

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High-Flyer

Air hostess JULIE COLLINS has been as high up in the world as anyone else, excepting only the astronauts, and as far as ambition is concerned the only thing left that excites Julie’s imagination is being an astronaut herself. May we say she’s the girl we’d most like to go into orbit with? Or the girl we’d most like to go giddy with? Same thing.

As an air hostess Julie has been on the Britain - America run and has touched down in every part of the American continent when serving with an American airline. She has finally settled in London, which she prefers to any other - it’s currently the swingiest, it seems - and she wants to get her feet back on the ground for a while. She’s twenty-two and she’s gorgeous.

Span No 132 - August 1965

Sylvia Ternes

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Not Surprising

When a girl has legs as lovely as SYLVIA TERNES it’s not surprising to find that her progress down a Berlin Strasse accompanied by whistles of Teutonic admiration, and if you’ve ever heard the Berliners whistle you’d know it’s something you couldn’t miss, even with a brass band playing. Sylvia, nineteen, is rather sweet, don’t you think?

Span No 123 - November 1964

Shirley Epps

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Coming Out?

SHIRLEY EPPS doesn’t need an awful lot of coaxing to come out, but she does need some tactful type to remind her that skirts, though short this season, are still being worn!

“I know that, stupid,” said Shirley, “and I’m not budging from here until mine turns up.” Shirley was, in fact, only hanging around the back door waiting for the dry cleaners to deliver the skirt.

At her New Year party she fell into the apple bucket.

Then the guy next door (who never misses a thing) popped his eyes over the fence. Shirley saw through that, however, and turned her back on him.

And when she finally get out it in a floral dress the skirt came shrunk.

Anyway, the floral frock was real springlike—and so, in the sunshine, was Shirley, as she gambolled over the grass.

Span Extra - Spring 1959

Dawn Grayson

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Do You Collect Orchids?

If you do, then please keep them in a perfect condition until you have a hundred exotic blooms. Then present them to your wife’s mother. This will convince both your wife and her mother that you have gone off your nut, and they will humour you and coddle you for the rest of your days.

If however, you don’t collect orchids and don’t know the joys of having such fragrant beauty for your very own, console yourself by cutting out these pictures of DAWN GRAYSON and pasting them in your album. Your friends will all be delighted to let you show them your album from then on.

Dawn is a Luton girl who loves gardening and landscape-painting.

Spick No 132 - August 1965

Olga Renown

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Old Fashioned ?

Daughter of a British naval officer, OLGA RENOWN is nineteen and has a flat in London.

She used to follow the fleet in the company of her mother, but there comes a time when a girl has to be independent. So Olga settled in London, got herself a job as a secretary and goes to work carrying a colourful umbrella. She finds it useful for hailing taxis.

Olga calls herself old-fashioned.

Old fashioned ?

Well, yes, she says. She likes bouffant petticoats, with yards of lace showing beneath swirly, flaring skirts. Says it's old-fashioned but ever so eye-catching to men.

Darling, you're dead right.

Marion Kyle

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Dimples

Lovely Scottish lass with the cute dimples and the curvaceous outlook is MARION KYLE of Ayrshire. North of the Border it seems a fact that all the girls are not only curvaceous but traditionally bonny.

Marion is gay, bright and vivacious. She works in an office and this is her first appearance as a pin-up girl. Looking as cute as she does we hope that first is not also the last.

We couldn’t, in fact, pass those dimples by without wanting to see them again.